Читать книгу The Greatest Works of Aleister Crowley - Aleister Crowley - Страница 67

Table of Contents

Septembey 13

I wonder how I have lived through this. Peter came in last night just after I had closed my diary. I had never seen him like it before ; his eyes were half out of his head, bloodshot and furious. He must have been drinking like a madman. He was trembling with rage. He came straight up to me, and hit me deliberately in the face.

" That'll teach you," he shouted, and called me a foul name.

I couldn't answer. I was too hurt, not by the blow, but by the surprise. I had pictured it so differently.

He staggered back into the middle of the room and pointed to the blood that was running down my face. The edge of his ring had cut the corner of my eye. The sight sent him into fits of hysterical laughter.

The only feeling in my mind was that he was ill that it was my duty to nurse him. I tried to go to the door to get help. He thought I was escaping, and flung me back right across the room on to the bed, howling with rage.

" You can get away with it at once," he said, " but that's enough. You wait right here, and see whether Mr. Bloody King Lamus will come to fetch you. Don't fret ; I expect he will. He likes dirt, the filthy beast ! "

I burst out crying. The contrast between the two men was too shocking. And I belonged to this screaming swearing bully with his insane jealousy and his senseless brutality I

I would rather have swept out Basil's studio for the rest of my life than be Lady Pendragon.

What masters of irony the gods are ! I had been swimming in a glowing flood of glory; I had been almost delirious to think I was the wife of a man in whose veins ran the blood of England's greatest king; of him whose glamour had gilded the centuries with romance; to think that I might hold such royal heirship under my heart. What radiant rapture !

And Peter himself had shown himself worthy of his ancestry. Had not he too beaten back the heathen and saved England ?

So this was the end of my dream ! This brawling ruffian was my man !

I sat stupefied while his incoherent insults battered my brain ; but my indignation was not for myself. I had deserved all I was getting ; but what right had this foul-mouthed coward to take in his mouth the name of a man like King Lamus ?

My silence seemed to exasperate him more than if I had taken up the quarrel. He swayed and swore with blind ferocity. He didn't seem to know where I was. It was getting dark. He groped his way round the room looking for me; but he passed me twice before he found me. The third time he stumbled up against me, gripped me by the shoulder, and began to strike.

I sat as if I were paralysed. I could not even scream. Again and again he swore and struck me savagely, yet so weakly that I could not feel the blows. Besides, I was dulled to all possible pain. Presently he collapsed, and rolled over on the bed. I thought for a moment he was dead, and then he was seized by a series of spasms; his muscles twisted and twitched; his hands clawed at the air ; he began to mutter rapidly and unintelligibly. I was horribly frightened.

I got up and lit the gas. The poor boy's face was white as death ; but small, dark crimson flushes burnt on the cheek-bones.

I sat at the table for some time and thought. I didn't dare send for a doctor. He might know what was the matter and take him away from me ; take him to one of those torture-traps, and he'd never get out.

I knew what he wanted, of course; a little heroin would bring him round all right. I told him I had some. I had to tell him several times before he understood.

When he did, the mere thought helped to restore him but there remained an ort of rage, and he told me to give it him, with a greedy snarl. If I had wanted to keep it from him, I shouldn't have let him know I had it.

I brought him the stuff, sitting down by his side and lifting his head with one hand while I gave it to him on the back of the other. My heart sank like a stone in deep water. The old familiar attitude, the old familiar act !-and yet how different in every point!

The convulsive movements stopped immediately. He sat up almost at once on one elbow. The only sign of distress was that he still breathed heavily. All his anger, too, had disappeared. He seemed tired, like a convalescent, but as tractable as a child. He smiled faintly. I don't know if he had any consciousness or memory of what had passed. He talked as if there had been no quarrel at all. The colour came back to his face, the light to his eyes.

" One more go like that, Lou," he said, " and I'll be all right."

I wasn't at all sure what King Lamus would have said; but it was my own responsibility, and I couldn't refuse him.

He went off to sleep very soon after. In the morning I found out what had happened to him. He had been round to some of the men he used to know in the hospital to get them to give him some H., but they hadn't dared to do it. They were suffering from a sense of insult about the new law, the Diabolical Dope Act. They had undergone a long and expensive training and had diplomas which made them responsible for the health of the community; and now they weren't allowed to prescribe for their own patients. It was natural enough that they should be indignant.

The fourth man to whom Peter had gone told the same story, but had been very cordial. He thought he'd help things by standing Peter a dinner and filling him up with alcohol, with the idea that that would help him to support the lack of the other stimulant. It seems that I had to pay for the prescription.

No, Lou, you're a naughty girl. You mustn't be bitter like that. It's your fault for getting born into a world where ignorance and folly are in constant competition for the premiership of the minds of the educated classes. The commonest ploughman would have had more horse-sense than that doctor.

I gave Peter the tablet with plenty of water when he began to get restless. It soothed him a great deal. I wished I had one for myself. I felt my irritability returning ; but I didn't break out because it couldn't be long till Basil came round. I looked forward to his coming as to a certain end to all our troubles....

What actually happened was quite different. I hardly know how to write it down. The shame and the disappointment are blasting. I feel that the doors of hope have been slammed in my face. I can imagine the grinding of the key as it turns in the lock, the screech of the rusty bolt as it is driven home.

The moment Basil appeared, Peter's insanity blazed up. He poured out a stream of insults, and accused Basil to his face of trying to get me away.

If Basil had only known how eagerly I would have gone ! A man in sexual mania is not fit to consort with human beings. I never realised before why women despise men in their hearts so deeply. We respect men who have mastered their passions, if only because we are ourselves uftimately nothing but those passions. We expect a man to show himself superior. It will not do to kill passion, like Klingsor ; the sexless man is even lower than " the wounded king," Amfortas, the victim of his virility. The true hero is Parsifal, who feels the temptations. " A man of like passions with ourselves." The more acutely alive he is to love, the greater are his possibilities. But he must refuse to surrender to his passions; he must make them serve him. " Diemen ! Diemen ! "

Who would kill a horse because he was afraid to ride him ? It is better to mount, and dare the brute to bolt.

After the man is thrown, we pick him up and nurse him, but we don't adore him. Most men are like that. But what every woman is looking for is the man with the most spirited horse and the most complete mastery of him. That's most symbolic in The Garden of Allah, where the monk who cannot ride takes a stallion out into the desert, determined to fight the thing out to a finish.

Basil was not moved by the savage spite of Peter. He refused to be provoked. Whenever he got a chance to put a word in, he simply asserted the purpose of his visit. He did not even take the trouble to deny the main accusation.

It tired Peter to dash himself so uselessly against the cliff of Basil's contempt. I don't mean that it was contempt, either, but his calm kindness was bound to be felt as contempt because Peter couldn't help knowing how well he deserved disdain. He was aware of the fact that his abuse became weaker and emptier with every outburst. He simply pulled himself together with a last effort of animosity toward the friend who could have saved us, and ordered him out of the house. He made himself more ridiculous by posing as an outraged husband.

Lofty morality is the last refuge when one feels oneself to be hopelessly in the wrong.

It was the first time I had ever known Peter play the hypocrite. His professions of propriety were simply the measure of his indignity.

There was nothing for Basil to do but to go. Peter pretended to have scored a triumph. It would not have deceived anybody, but-if there had been a chance-he cut away the pulpit from under his own feet when he swung back into the room and snapped with genuine feeling:

" God damn it, what a fool I am! Why didn't you tip me the wink ? We ought to have played up to him and got some heroin out of him...."

This morning has taken everything out of me. I don't care about saving myself. I know I can't save Peter. Why must a woman always have a man for her motive ? All I want is H. Both Cockie and I need it hellishly.

"Look here, Lou," he said with a cunning grin, such as I'd never seen before, quite out of keeping with his character. " You doll yourself up and try the doctors. A man told me last night that there were some who would give you a prescription if you paid them enough. A tener ought to do the trick."

He pulled some dirty crumpled notes out of his trousers' pocket.

" Here you are. For God's sake, don't be long."

I was as keen as he was. All the will to stop had been washed out of me when Basil went. My self-respect was annihilated.

Yet I think it was reluctance to go that kept me hanging about on the pretence of attending to my toilet.

Peter watched me with approval. There was a hateful gleam in his eye, and I loved it. We were both degraded through and through. We had reached the foul straw of the sty. There was something warm and comfortable about snuggling up to depravity. We had realised the ideal of our perversion....

I went to my own doctor. Peter had put me up to symptoms; but he wasn't taking any. He talked about change of climate and diet and the mixture to be taken three times a day. I saw at once it was no good by the way he jumped when I mentioned heroin first.

All I could do was to get out of the old fool's room without losing face....

I didn't know what to do next. I felt like Morris What's-his-name in The Wrong Box when he had to have a false death certificate, and wanted a " venal doctor."

It annoyed me that it was daylight, and I didn't know where to go. Suddenly, out of nowhere, there came the name and address of the man who had helped Billy Coleridge out of her scrape. It was a long way off, and I was horribly tired. I was hungry, but the thought of lunch made me sick. I felt that people were looking at me strangely. Was it the scar by my eye ?

I bought a thick veil. The girl looked surprised, I thought. I suppose it was rather funny in September, and might attract still more attention ; but it gave me a sense of protection, and it was a very pretty veil

-cream lace with embroidered zig-zags.

I took a taxi to the doctor's. Doctor Collins, it was, 61 or 71 Fairelange Street, Lambeth.

I found him at home; a horrid, snuffy old man with shabby clothes; a dingy grimy office as untidy as himself.

He seemed disappointed at my story. It wasn't his line, he said, and he didn't want to get into trouble. On the other hand, he was frightened of me because of what I knew about Billy. He promised to do what he could; but under the new law, he couldn't do more than prescribe ten doses of an eighth of a grain apiece. Four or five sniffs, the whole thing I And he wouldn't dare to repeat it in less than a week.

However, it was better than nothing. He told me where to get it made up.

I found a cloak-room where I could put the packets into one, and started.

The relief was immense. I went on, dose after dose. Cockie could get his own. I should tell him I had drawn blanks. I felt I could eat again, and had some light food and a couple of whiskies and sodas.

I felt so good that I drove straight back to Greek Street, and poured out a mournful tale of failure. It was delicious to deceive that brute after he'd struck me.

It was keen pleasure to see him in such pain ; to imitate his symptoms with minute mimicry; to mock at his misery. He was angry all the same, but his blows gave me infinite pleasure. They were the symbols of my triumph.

" Here, you get out of this," he said, " and don't come back without it. I know where you can get it. Andrew McCall is the man's name. I know him to the bottom of his rotten soul."

He gave me the address.

It was a magnificent house near Sloane Square. He had married a rich old woman, and lived on the fat of the land.

I had met him once myself in society. He was a self-made Scot, and thought evening dress de rigeur in Paradise.

Peter sent me off with a sly snigger. There was some insane idea at the back of his mind. Well, what did I care ?...

Dr. McCall was a man of fifty or so, very well preserved and very well dressed, with a gardenia in his buttonhole. He recognised me at once, and drew me by the hand into a comfortable arm-chair. He began to chatter about our previous meeting ; about the duchess of this and the countess of that.

I wasn't listening, I was watching. His tact told him that I wasn't interested. He stopped abruptly.

" Well, well, excuse me for running on like this about old times. The point is, what can I do for you to-day, Miss Laleham ? "

I instantly saw my advantage. I shook my head laughingly.

" Oh, no," I said, " it's not Miss Laleham." He begged my pardon profusely for the mistake.

" Can it be possible ? Two such beautiful girls so much alike ? "

" No," I smiled back, " it's not as bad as that. I was Miss Laleham, but now I am Lady Pendragon." " Dear, dear," he said, " where can I have been ? Quite out of the world, quite out of the world ! "

" Oh, I'm not quite such an important person as that, and I only married Sir Peter in July."

" Ah, that accounts for it," said the doctor. " I've been away all the summer in the heather with the Marchioness of Eigg. Quite out of the world, quite out of the world. Well, I'm sure you're very happy, my dear Lady Pendragon."

He always mentioned a title with a noise like a child sucking a stick of barley sugar.

I saw at once the way to appeal to him.

"Well, of course, you know," I said, "in really smart circles one has to offer heroin and cocaine to people. It's only a passing fashion, of course, but while it's on, one's really out of it if one doesn't do the right thing."

McCall got out of the chair at his desk, and drew up a little tapestried stool close to mine.

" I see, I see," he muttered confidentially, taking my hand and beginning to stroke it gently, " but you know, it's very hard to get."

" It is for us poor outsiders," I lamented, " but not for you."

He rolled back my sleeve, and moved his hand up and down inside of my forearm. I resented the familiarity acutely. The snobbishness of the man reminded me that he was the son of a small shopkeeper in a lowland village-a fact which I shouldn't have thought of for a second but for his own unctuous insistence on Debrett.

He got up and went to a little wall safe behind my back. I could hear him open and shut it. He returned and leant over the back of my chair, stretching out his left arm so that I could see what was in his hand.

It was a sealed ten-gramme bottle labelled " Heroin Hydrochlorid," with the quantity and the maker's name. The sight of it drove me almost insane with desire

Within a yard of my face was the symbol of victory. Cockie, Basil, the law, my own physical pangs:they were all in my power from the moment my fingers closed over the bottle.

I put out my hand; but the beroin had disappeared in the manner of a conjuring trick.

McCall leant his weight on the back of my chair and tilted it slightly. His ugly shrewd false face was within a foot of mine.

Will you' really let me have that ? " I faltered. Sir Peter's very rich. We can afford to pay the price, whatever it is."

He gave a funny little laugh. I shrank from the long wolf-like mouth hanging over me greedily open, with its bared two white rows of sharp, long fangs.

I was nauseated by the stale whisky in his breath.

He understood immediately; let my chair back to its normal position, and went back to his desk. He sat there and watched me eagerly like a man stalking game. As if inadvertently, he took out the bottle and played with it aimlessly.

In his smooth varnished voice he began to tell me what he called the romance of his life. The first time he saw me he had fallen passionately in love with me; but he was a married man, and his sense of honour prevented his yielding to his passion. He had, of course, no love for his wife, who didn't understand him at all. He had married her out of pity ; but for all that he was bound by his sense of right feeling, and above all by realising that to give rein to his passion, God-given though it was, would mean social ruin for me, for the woman he loved.

He went on to talk about affinities and soul-mates and love at first sight. He reproached himself for having told me the truth, even now, but it had been too strong for him. The irony of fate ! The tragic absurdity of social restrictions !

At the same time, he would feel a certain secret pleasure if he knew that I, on my part, had had something of the same feeling for him. And all the time, he went on playing with the heroin. Once or twice he nearly dropped it in his nervous emotion.

It made me jump to think of the danger to that precious powder. But there was clearly only one thing to be done to get it : to fall in with the old fellow's humour.

I let my head fall on my breast and looked at him sideways out of the corners of my eyes.

" You can't expect a young girl to confess everything she has felt," I whispered with a deep sigh, " especially when she has had to kill it out of her heart. It does no good to talk of these things," I went on. " I ought really not to have come. But how could I guess that you, a great doctor like you, had taken any notice of a silly kid like me ? "

He jumped to his feet excitedly.

" No, no," I said sadly, with a gesture which made him sit down again, very uneasily. " I should never have come. It was absolutely weakness on my part. The heroin was only my excuse. Oh, don't make me feel so ashamed. But I simply must tell you the truth. The real motive was that-I wanted to see you. Now, let's talk about something else. Will you let me have that heroin, and how much will it cost ? "

" One doesn't charge one's friends for such slight services," he answered loftily. " The only doubt in my mind is whether it's right for me to let you have it."

He took it out again and read the label. He rolled the bottle between his palms.

" It's terribly dangerous stuff," he continued very seriously. " I'm not at all sure if I should be justified in giving it to you."

What absolute rubbish and waste of time, this social comedy I Every one in London knew McCall's hobby for intrigues with ladies of title. He had invented the silly story of love at first sight on the spur of the moment. It was just a gambit.

And as for me, I loathed the sight of the man, and he knew it. And he knew, too, that I wanted that heroin desperately badly. The real nature of the transaction was as plain as a prison plum-pudding.

But I suppose it does amuse one in a sort of way to ape various affected attitudes. He knew that my modesty and confusion and blushes were put on like so much paint on the cheeks of a Piccadilly street walker. It didn't even hurt his vanity to know that I thought him an offensive old ogre. He had the thing I wanted, I had the thing he wanted, and he didn't care if I drugged myself to death to-morrow, provided I had paid his price to-day.

The callous cynicism on both sides had one good effect from the moral point of view. It prevented me wasting my time in trying to cheat him.

He went on with his gambit. He explained that my marriage made a great difference. With reasonable caution, for which we had every facility, there was not the slightest risk of scandal.

Only one thing stuck in my conscience, and fought the corrosive attack of the heroin-hunger. After King Lamus had gone this morning, Peter and I had quarrelled bitterly. I had given up Basil, I had given up all idea of living a decent life, I had embraced the monster in whose arms I was struggling, gone with my eyes wide open into his dungeon, devoted myself to drugs, and why ? I was Sir Peter's wife. The loss of my virtue, independence, self-respect, were demanded by my loyalty to him. And already that loyalty demanded disloyalty of another kind.

It was a filthy paradox. Peter had sent me to McCall with perfect foresight. I knew well enough what he expected of me, and I gloried in my infamy-partly for its own sake, but partly, unless I am lying to myself, because my degradation proved my devotion to him.

I no longer heard what McCall was saying, but I saw that he had taken a little pocket-knife and cut the string of the bottle. He had levered out the cork, and dipped the knife into the powder. He measured out a dose with a queer cunning questioning smile in his eyes.

My breath was coming quickly and shallowly. I gave a hurried little nod. I seemed to hear myself saying, " A little bit more." At least, he added to the heap.

" A little mild stimulant is indicated," he said, with an imitation of his bedside manner. He was kneeling in front of my chair, and held up his hand like a priest making an offering to his goddess.

The next thing I remember is that I was walking feverishly, almost running, up Sloane Street. I had a feeling of being pursued. Was it true, that old Greek fable of the Furies ? What had I done ? What had I done ?

My fingers worked spasmodically on the little amber-tinted bottle of poison. I wanted to get away from every one and everything. I didn't know where I was going. I hated Peter from the depths of my soul. I would have given anything in the world-except the heroin-to be able never to see him again. But he had the money, why shouldn't we enjoy our abject ruin as we had enjoyed our romance ? Why not wallow in the moist, warm mire ?